Spring?

The Monday night match seems to have replaced the Wednesday match, now that I am an employee :-( 

So, for April 30th, we were to have our last match on the Top Pond. With the weather having taken a step back towards winter, I hoped to draw in the deeper water, but instead managed P4 - where I've not fished before, but I was told it was pretty shallow….

With only 3 hours from 18:00 -> 21:00 it's all about finding the fish - and I struggled and only managed 3lbs - 10oz - I did beat those either side of me but was 8th of 13 and not best pleased - but I fished as well as I could and you can only catch what's there.

But the good news was that I would be fishing the Wednesday match  - and my drawing luck had to change - or so I thought - again I drew the shallowest peg on the pond P14, which in the summer is one of my favourites. But not when it's been so cold overnight. To my right I had John Perrela, and Nigel Foulds with Andy Prentice and Jimmy Hillhouse to my left. All good anglers. On commercial fisheries like Magiscroft, carp dominate the matches due to their size (any where from a few ounces to 6lbs +) - between us we had 5 carp in 5 hours. Meanwhile, at the deeper end of the pond, folk are catching loads of carp - I managed 2lbs - 9oz of roach, which saw me 17th of 20 - a bad day.

Sunday 6th of May was my first time fishing in the "Barras League' - it's a team competition with 4 per team. It takes place over 4 matches with each team member fishing on one of the four Magiscroft ponds. I'll miss the 3rd match due to my annual trip to the St Lawrence during the first week of June.

This means I get to fish the Woodside, Main Loch and Top Ponds, and John Baird will sub for me for the Island match.

Our team is pretty strong with team captain Wullie MacAully joined by Dougie Craig, Davie Smith and me.

It was a close match on the Woodside, with lots of folk catching on a regular basis, and I was happy to finish 4th. My team mates did very well with Davie and Dougie winning their matches and Wullie managing a 3rd on the Top Pond, so after one match, we lead with 43 points :-)

Monday 7th was a wet and miserable day, but as it was the first of the Monday matches on the Island pond, we had 17 anglers. The pond had not fished well on the Sunday , apart from Dougie bagging 40lbs+ :-) so we expected a tough match. But trying to figure what influences the carp's feeding patterns is for the moment, beyond me. I managed 15lbs flat despite being unable to fish the far bank - P26 is around 16m wide, and I was still recovering from a heavy gym session and just couldn't control my pole at that distance. This put me 8th of 17  - I'm pretty sure if I had been able to fish as normal, that 20lbs plus was on the cards.

So a difficult couple of weeks, but when it counted, I caught....But the weather has turned pretty nasty with first some surprise overnight frosts and lately, wind and rain - Come on summer!